#ChefColumns: Dana Cree, Part 4

When the big boss bows out.

October 9, 2015

● 3 min read

#ChefColumns: Dana Cree, Part 4

When the big boss bows out.

October 9, 2015

● 3 min read

Pastry chef Dana Cree is making the leap from restaurants (and her post at Blackbird in Chicago) to the world of dairy, taking a position as Culinary Director for 1871 Dairy. She is documenting the process in a multi-part series, here on ChefsFeed. Catch up if you're just joining the party, with Parts One, Two, and Three.

Everyone
is replaceable.

I was
once told this in a moment of personal doubt, when I struggled to see the
direction my path was taking me. It wasn’t said to threaten me, but to free me;
inevitably, in a restaurant, everyone who works there will leave. Unless, that
is, you own the joint, which reduces your chance of leaving by half. Everyone will
be the one who leaves at some point, but what of those left behind? What happens
to a cook when their chef moves on?

I’ve always
considered the positions I’ve held custodial. Just as I took the position at Blackbird from
another pastry chef, so I have given it to yet another comrade-in-arms. When
the goodbyes were said and my last staff meal was eaten, I walked away knowing
another pastry chef was there to carry the torch.

Luckily,
the daily urgency of restaurant work relies on a momentum that helps every cook
carry on through the early days of transition. But it isn’t easy watching the
department you’re an active part of change and mutate in front of your eyes.
Even the most flexible dispositions have breaking points.
How
do you work for a boss you didn’t choose, particularly if you took the job at a
restaurant specifically to work for the dearly departed chef? One thing I would
tell all my cooks is that they came to work for Blackbird, just as I did. When you strip back all the nuances I plastered
over the walls of that pastry department, the foundation underneath is always
going to be Blackbird. It is the roof over our heads, the coats on our backs,
the ovens we fill with cookies, and the entity that signs our paychecks. That’s
true whether I’m populating the department with dishes, or another pastry chef
is.

Things
will be different. This isn’t good or bad, but temporary. The discomfort of
transition isn’t a sign of a storm coming, it’s a sign of a little cloudy
weather quietly passing by. You’re going to carry weight you’re not used to as
a new leader revises and disperses labor to fit their menu. You’re going to be
asked to give up some of the stability you’ve come to rely on. Only if you
start to flail in panic, will things start to collapse. The Irish butcher at
the Fat Duck once told me to be like the willows in the wind, which bend and
sway with the wind from any angle. Eventually, they stand back up straight. As
the winds of change pass, remember the flexibility that benefits these reeds.
You’ll soon have a new routine to carry you through the day.

When
a chef takes over a functioning kitchen, there is an inevitable double-power
shift. First, cooks will need to train the new chef on the nuances of the
restaurant before they can step back into the director’s chair. As cooks, you
were taught how to do your job by someone else, and now it’s your turn to give
that back. A new chef will come in knowing how to do their job, but they don’t
know how to do yours. It’s a power shift that doesn’t feel natural, when a cook
feels like they know more than the chef, but teach them with patience. The
sooner you do, the balance of the world will fall back into place.

The
other side of the coin is something every cook working through a change in
command needs to hear. You didn’t pick them, but they didn’t pick you either. When
a chef takes over a kitchen, they are given a full staff to work with, which
may or may not be made up of people they would have hired. In a perfect world,
the remaining staff and the new chef will be a perfect match. If you work in
such a place, congratulations, and I’m super jealous of the rainbow unicorns
and glitter tigers you probably also have. In the real world, you have as much
to prove to them as they do to you.

Now,
if you really believe this new chef isn’t the right fit for you, and you just
have to move on, ask yourself this: can you find it in yourself to hold up the
department while the new chef finds their bearings? It may not mean much to
you, but it will mean a lot to a person trying to find a way to lift the weight
of their new management job. If it’s not for you, there’s nothing wrong with making
room for the right person to slot themselves in—so make your exit with respect
and proper notice, and finish strong.
Just as every cook deserves to work for a chef
that they can thrive under, every chef deserves a cook that gives them the same
chance. At the bare minimum, you owe one another that.